Conan Doyle Con, Birmingham

Quite excited that I have been asked to be a guest at Conan Doyle Con on Sat 30th May 2015.

Fictitious character or not – as  child I always felt an affinity with Holmes! Holmes is, after all, my mother’s, father’s, family name! (Edwards is the maternal line).

Now Holmeses are legion in South Wales, and I always assumed that the family were dyed in the wool Taffs, but no.   On doing some family research a few years back I discovered that my Gr-Grancha, William Holmes was, in fact, a Devonshire lad!  His family lived, loved and learned in the village of Alphington,  now a part of  Exeter.

George was one of those unusual people of the time – a divorcee! His first wife, Minnie Stamp, having run away to marry a Bill Sandover – publican of the Devonshire Inn, Ridgeway, Plympton st. Mary, Devon. George left his native land and migrated to Treforest !

My story  The Jamesian Conundrum, to appear in october this year in The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Moriarty: The Secret Life of Sherlock Holmes’s Nemesis, is also set in the west country; which gives it all a strange sense of circularity.

Conan Doyle Con  will be on Sat 30th May 2015.from 12pm at The City Tavern Birmingham Five Ways tickets £15 include a 10% discount of books bought on the day and a 90 min play by Reginald Musgrave Don’t go into the Cellar. With guests Tom Ue,  Michael R. Brush, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Jan Edwards Rhys Hughes and Steve Lockley